Modern theater is a field marked by competing, and often contradictory, impulses and developments. A critique of certain types of theatre is a productive force within modernism and a force that led to the most successful reforms of modern theatre and drama. This exciting collection of essays in Palgrave's "Performance Interventions" series rethinks the historical formations and functions of antitheatricality within modern drama, opera, literature, film, and art.

"Against Theatre" shows that the most prominent writers of modern drama shared a radical rejection of the theatre as they knew it. Together with designers, composers and film makers, they plotted to destroy all existing theatres. But from their destruction emerged the most astonishing innovations of modernist theatre.